In Jewish legend, the Golem was a man-made creature endowed with enormous strength. RabbiJudah Loew of Prague, also know as the Maharal, created him of clay and gave him life by putting apiece of paper with the secret name of God under his tongue.
The Golem helped the Jews defend themselves against anti-Semitic rioters, but one day heturned against his creator. He sowed ruin and destruction, until, at the last moment, therabbi succeeded in extracting the piece of paper from his mouth. The Golem turned back into aheap of clay.
Ariel Sharon is not a rabbi and the Kabbalah is a closed book to him. But he has created a Golem:the settlement movement in the occupied territories.
He was sure that the Golem would serve him. After all, the settlers owe him everything. It was hewho nursed them for decades, diverted funding to them on a massive scale, put at their serviceall the political positions he occupied one after the other: the ministries of agriculture,defense, foreign affairs, housing, industry and trade, infrastructure, and, finally, thePrime Minister’s office.
(I remember about 25 years ago, visiting Sharon at home in the preparation of a biographicalessay I was writing about him. My wife and I were sitting in the kitchen with Lilly Sharon, whoserved us her delicacies, when I noticed that the chiefs of the settlers were sitting in theadjoining room. Sharon himself went back and forth between us, sharing his time with usequally. Even at that early stage the settlers clearly treated him as their patron.)
During all these years, ever since he served as the Commanding General of the Southern Sectorin the early 70s, he preached to everybody he met, Israelis and foreigners alike, the gospel ofthe settlements, spreading maps in front of them (he always has maps) and demanding that theyact. According to him, it was vitally important to set up settlements in order to turn all ofEretz Israel – from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, at least – into a Jewish State, totear the Palestinian territories into ribbons and prevent the creation of a Palestinianstate, which would be an obstacle to the achievements of the full aims of Zionism.
Like a bulldozer without brakes, Sharon leveled all opposition. He saw to it that tens ofbillions of dollars were turned over to the settlements (the exact amount cannot beascertained, being hidden in various corners of the budget), bent the laws to their benefitand enlisted the officers of the army in their service. In this way, a closely woven network ofsettlements and special roads came into being, with perhaps 250,000 settlers (who iscounting?)
When he coined the slogan “unilateral disengagement”, it never occurred to him that thesettlers might oppose him. Don’t they owe him? Are they not his pampered children? Aren’t theyeternally in his debt?
Sharon offered them a deal that seemed to him eminently reasonable (as it had once looked toYossi Beilin, who invented it, and then to Ehud Barak, who tried to implement it): Give up theisolated settlements, with a few tens of thousands of settlers, in order to secure the futureof the big settlement blocks, with 80% of the settlers, which will be incorporated intoIsrael. Sacrifice some fingers in order to save the whole body. This way not only do we save thesettlement enterprise, but we also gain the better part of the West Bank.
But the Golem, once the piece of paper is under his tongue, demonstrates a logic of his own. Hedoes not intend to give up the dozens of small settlements, especially as that is were the hardcore of Messianic fanatics lives. He also understood that the evacuation of the firstsettlement would create a precedent that would endanger all the others. The real settlers mayhave nothing but contempt for the Gush Katif “settlers”, who are first and foremostcalculating businessmen, but they understand the crucial importance of the battle for GushKatif.
Like the Maharal, Sharon underrated his Golem. He treated him as a servant. How could herespect a creature that he had created with his own hands? Now he is learning that it is mucheasier to create a Golem than to reverse the process.
In the surfeit of interviews that Sharon gave last weekend, he declared that the settlers areonly a small minority of the people. And indeed, even according to the settlers themselves,they constitute less than 4% of the citizens of Israel. But the numbers do not reflect theiractual power. In a democratic society, a small, fanatical and highly motivated minority caninfluence matters more than a big but apathetic and flabby majority.
Sharon speculated on the unpopularity of the settlers in Israel. They are violent and unruly;they speak, dress and behave differently, even their body-language is different. Theordinary Israeli sees them as a bizarre sect. Also, at long last is has dawned on the Israelisthat the settlements are devouring the billions that are needed for Israel’s economic andsocial recovery.
But in the course of the decades, the settlers have set up an extensive apparatus of control andpropaganda. Patiently, they have infiltrated the army, where they now occupy the keypositions once held by Kibbutzniks. Their independent media are expanding, while the Lefthas in the course of the years given up literally all their independent media. The settlers arein possession of huge funds, not only the money that flows to them through hundreds of channelsfrom the state coffers, and not only the lavish donations from American Jewishmulti-millionaires, but also from the plentiful resources of the American Christianevangelists.
One may well ask: what foolishness possessed Sharon, when he proposed that the Likud members,of all people, should decide on his plan? Did he not realize that this is the only arena where thesettlers can command superior forces?
Why? As usual with victory-drunk generals: out of sheer arrogance and contempt for theopponent. At the pinnacle of political power, he disparaged the settlers. He did not dream ofthe mass home visits. He underrated their emotional appeal and their well-oiled logisticmachine, that was created with the money of the state.
Most of the settlers constitute a disciplined body. Like any messianic sect, theyunquestioningly obey their commanders, the “Yesha rabbis” (Yesha is the Hebrew acronym forJudea, Samaria and Gaza.) This is a totalitarian structure, in the true sense of the term:total faith, total organization, total discipline.
“My head supports the Sharon plan, but my heart supports the settlers,” a Likud memberconfessed. That is quite natural: when a settler pair with attached baby (there is always ababy attached!) knocks at the door and asks: “Do you want to evict us from our home?” – how can heresist? After all, from the day he was born he has heard that the national aim is to possess thewhole of Eretz Israel, that the settlers are the salt of the earth, that one can ignore the restof the world – and suddenly this man, Sharon, comes and says the opposite?
Yet it must be remembered that less than 2% of the Israeli electorate voted against the Sharonplan in this party referendum. (In the last elections, the Likud received less than 30% of thevotes. Less then a quarter of these are Likud members, who were entitled to take part in thereferendum. Of these, less than half did actually vote, and of these, less than 60% votedagainst the plan. These, together with the settlers who are not Likud members, compose theGolem.)
One good thing has come from this referendum: suddenly the public has woken up and seen theGolem that has come to life in their midst. From the first moment, the writing was on the wall:the settler movement is sucking the marrow from the state, it is an obstacle to peace, it is adanger to Israeli democracy and to the future of the state itself. Now the general public, too,sees the danger represented by this rampaging Golem.
It is not too late to remove the piece of paper from beneath the Golem’s tongue. Not yet!